In a semiconductor field, up to now, a system constructed using single crystalline silicon has been general. In recent years, development of elements and circuits using non-crystalline silicon such as amorphous silicon or polycrystalline silicon or a non-silicon semiconductor such as an organic semiconductor, diamond, or silicon carbide has been progressing rapidly.
However, the single crystalline silicon constituting an element has a superior characteristic. Therefore, the large majority of semiconductor integrated circuits which are actually used are fundamentally made of a single crystalline silicon. Circuits each using a semiconductor other than the single crystalline silicon have not been studied sufficiently up to now.
A semiconductor memory which is a principal constituent circuit of a computer has not been also studied. In particular, in a nonvolatile memory in which information is retained even after a power source is turned off, a single crystalline silicon transistor is used as a transistor for controlling an applied voltage to a memory element (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-530850).